Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [117]
Paper, envelopes, manila folders, all unused, mutely accusing. Programs for plays, operas, and concerts he’d attended with Rosemary—why the hell is he still saving these? Fred shoves them in the overloaded wastebasket. The long handwoven tan cashmere scarf that Rosemary gave him for his birthday, winding it round and round his neck with her own hands. A square of pocket mirror with the mauve-pink imprint of her mouth on it, commemorating their first kiss. They had just finished lunch at La Girondelle in the Fulham Road, and Rosemary was renewing her lipstick. Fred, suddenly realizing that they were about to part, leaned over the table toward her, saying something impulsive, passionate. She glanced up, smiling slowly and wonderfully, then blotted her open mouth on the glass to avoid smudging his. How charming, how thoughtful, he had marveled. Later he had put his hand on her wrist to stop her from returning the bit of mirror to her handbag, claiming it as a souvenir. Now it has another meaning: before she kissed him, Rosemary had kissed herself.
Stop thinking about it, Fred tells himself. It’s over, for Christ’s sake; he’s leaving London the day after tomorrow and he will probably never see Rosemary Radley again. Also, as he realized this morning when he emptied his closet, he will never see again his Ragg sweater from L. L. Bean, his blue chambray workshirt, his Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse, and his spare toothbrush and razor, all of which he left at Rosemary’s before the day of her party.
But he can’t stop thinking about it. Angry as he is at Rosemary, he hasn’t been able to forget her. Several times in the last two weeks, against his better judgment, and giving himself the lame excuse that he just wants to pick up his sweater, shirt, etc., he has dialed her number. Most of the time it rings on and on, unanswered, though once Mrs. Harris picked it up, growled out, “Nobody home,” and slammed down the receiver. He also tried the answering service, where a falsely refined female voice always informed him that Lady Rosemary was “out of town.” A warble of amused condescension the last time he called suggested to Fred that the female voice knew all about him; that as soon as he hung up she would turn to other females and say: “Guess who just phoned Lady R again, the moron; when will he smarten up?” Though he left his name, Rosemary never called back.
Suppose he were to leave the message that he wasn’t going back to America, would Rosemary call him then? Yes, maybe, Fred thought. Maybe that’s what she’s waiting for. Or maybe not. It has occurred to him that in a way their love affair has reenacted Anglo-American history. Rosemary may have loved him, but she has the colonial mentality; she would do anything for him but grant him independence. When he demanded that, it was war.
Partly in order to stop himself from telephoning Rosemary again and leaving this self-destructive message, Fred has just had his phone cut off. His other, more rational motive was to save money. As it is, he’s going home dead broke, and in debt on both sides of the Atlantic.
He shuffles through a pile of letters from relatives and friends, consigning most to the wastebasket. Among them is a postcard from Roberto Frank in Buffalo. The reverse of the card is a painting from the Albright-Knox Gallery by Sir Joshua Reynolds: Cupid as Link Boy, 1774—selected because of Fred’s interest in the period, he had assumed. Now he looks at the picture more closely.
Ostensibly, it is a half-length portrait of one of those urchins who for a small fee used to light travelers through the streets of eighteenth-century London at night. This Cupid is no plump, laughing, naked babe: he is slight, shabbily dressed in contemporary costume, and seems about nine or ten. He is good-looking—indeed, he rather resembles Fred himself at that age—but quite obviously